In a pot, bring the chicken broth/stock to a boil and add the quinoa. Reduce to a medium heat and cover and continue to let it cook till all liquid is absorbed.

While the quinoa is cooking, heat the olive oil and garlic in a skillet on medium heat and let it cook down for a few min, add the chicken and continue to cook till chicken is about half way done. Add the broccoli and garbanzo beans and continue to cook with a lid on the skillet till the veggies are tender. Add the skillet ingredients to the pot of quinoa. Add the dijon mustard and salt and pepper to taste. Toss all ingredients and serve.

I decided to post my current progress on my mood blanket on facebook this morning. It's coming along nicely. I'm a little ahead but I'll need to be. My hubby will be coming home soon from deployment and we'll be moving to Fayetteville, North Carolina! I'm so excited! I've missed him so much and am looking forward to new surroundings and getting away from this sometimes terrifying Oklahoma weather.

I made a fresh batch of french vanilla ice cream this morning for dessert after dinner this evening. I licked the bowl and I must say, it's rather tasty lol. I prepare the mixture last night and let it chill over night so it would be ready for dinner today. I love my little ice cream machine. It's nothing fancy but it gets the job done.

I've decided that I'm gonna dye both colors in the give away I'm planning on doing soon. The winner will be able to pick which ever skein of yarn she likes and I'll just keep the other for myself and do a valentines project from it lol.

I've also decided in my shop I'll only be selling handspun yarn...I think. I prefer spinning and offering my colorways in that form as opposed to selling unspun fiber. But I'm still pondering over that one. We'll see how I'm feeling about it once we've moved. I might have a change of heart.

Well I'm off for now. I need to go dye my two braids of fiber for the give away!

01/15/2014

Valentine's is slowly approaching. Because we're moving soon, I don't have much time to do any big shop updates until after we arrive and get settled in our new home. But I don't want it to pass without doing anything at all!

I thought it would be fun to do a Valentine themed handspun GIVE AWAY (more details on that soon)! Do you all think you could help me? I have it narrowed down to two different colorways but I'm struggling with a final decision.

Leave your favorite colorway choice in the comments section. More details about the GIVE AWAY are coming soon! Stay tuned!

Anyone who knows me know I'm sucker for a tasty well made soup. I literally could have soup everyday of the week and never get tired of it. I decided to make some soup for dinner last night and I must say it was a big hit. Thought I'd share the recipe here. There's a few steps to it and you have to do some tempering but it's so worth it! It's an avgolemono (greek) which is basically a savory lemon rice soup. To follow suit with the lemon theme I decided to saute' some shrimp in lemon juice and garlic and olive oil and I even sliced up a few slivers of lemon and threw it in the saute' and it was super delish!! So here's the recipe below! I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!! This recipe was inspired by and adapted from one of my many Williams Sonoma cookbooks with my own personal touches added to make it unique :-)

Reduce heat to medium-low and slowly stir the tempered egg mixture. Cook, stirring, until the soup has thickened (about 3-5 min). Do NOT let the soup come to a boil. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Garnish with parsley flakes.

Sauteed Shrimp

Ingredients:

3 tbsp evoo (extra virigin olive oil)

12 oz shrimp peeled, deveined, & no tails

4 cloves of garlic- minced

salt and pepper to taste

2 green onions chopped

1/8 cup lemon juice

2 tbsp parsley flakes

1 half lemon, sliced very into thin slivers

In a large frying pan, heat olive oil and garlic over medium-high heat. Add shrimp and cook until it turns pink. Add the lemon juice, and cook for another minute. Salt and pepper and toss in the green onion and parsley. Remove from heat.

Ladel out your soup into a bowl and top it with the shrimp. It makes a pretty presentation and has a savory tangy flavor! The peppercorns add a pretty color and flavor as well :-)

01/14/2014

One would think with my graphic design background, I'd have my own personal blog. At one time I did but it was many years ago. I did a pretty good job keeping it up as well. Being that I'd like to reach more people and share all of my many yarnie and foodie adventures, I decided to start one up again.

I love all types of crafting and creativity, but my main areas of focus have to do with yarn, quilting, food, and photography. I love just about everything there is to do with yarn. I spin my own yarn on a spinning wheel (and spindles too), I dye my own fiber for spinning and I dye commercially spun yarn as well. I also knit, crochet, and weave. I'm hoping to share many of my own personal patterns along with some of my favorites from other talented designers!! Quilting is another passion of mine and I would love to share my projects with you! I also love to cook and bake. I'm a recipe/ cook book/ cookware junkie, so there will be loads of sharing. And of course no sharing would be complete without gorgeous photos to go with it!! All photos on this blog will be taken with my Canon Rebel T3i/ 600d and my various lenses, and are origial and photographed by me unless otherwise noted (I always give credit). All pictures are edited using Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

I have my own website where I sell handspun yarn and hand dyed fiber called Snerb. It's my little baby and I'm most proud of it. It's not a big name site selling oodles of goodies, just my own little place in the world wide web to share what I create with others. I have big dreams for my site and one day I hope to achieve them.

Since starting the Crochet Mood Blanket 2014 challenge on facebook, I've had a few questions about my project. I'm doing the hexagon pattern from Lucy of Attic24. I improvised a half hexagon pattern based off of her pattern so I wouldn't have the staggered sides (which was driving me slightly bonkers). A few people in the group and on instagram asked me how I did it. Please understand that I am still a novice, at best, when it comes to crochet (knitting is my lingo), but I'm more than happy to share how I went about making it. I don't know how to write a fomal crochet pattern so I will simply explain what I did and show pics so you can just follow along if my explaination is sub-par. This follows suit with Attic24's pattern and I give her full credit for her lovely design. PLEASE forgive my lack of crochet knowledge, I'm still a newbie. LOL.

Here we go: **click on each picture to see a larger image**

I'm using a different color for each row as a visual aid, but my own personal project only uses 2 colors.

You could either 1) chain 4 and do 6 double crochets in the hole; or 2) make a magic ring and do 6 double crochets in the ring and then sinch the ring closed.

Chain 4 (this will count as an extra dc and a chain 1), then do the bobble stitch, from Attic24's tutorial, in same stitch. Chain 1. Do 5 more bobble stitches and a chain 1 all the way to other end. Then do 1 additional dc in the last st at the other end. (6 bobble sts with one additional dc on each end).

Chain 3. Do 7 sets of granny sts in the next row (3 dc into each ch 1 space below).

Chain 3, and do 1 slip st in each space all the way across.

Follow diagram below for last row. This can be done alone and seamed later, or you can do the join-as-you-go technique demonstrated in Attic24's tutorial.

That's it! I hope it's easy to understand, if there's any quesitons, please post them in the comments section and I'll do my very best to answer!

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My name is Bren. I'm a hard core spinner and knitter who processes most of my yarn from raw fleece sheared straight off the animal. I also dabble with crochet and I love cooking and making cold processed soap and other bath and body goodies. Come hang out with me and hopefully get inspired!